The ball will find you: A look at the Boston Red Sox' poor start to the 2026 season

Wednesday 4/1/26

Five games into the season, the 2026 Boston Red Sox had already had a long losing streak than the 2013 and 2018 Boston Red Sox did in the entirety of their seasons.

The Red Sox look terrible, and though people will say, "Relax! It's early!" the truth about baseball is that there is no early, just as late comes very late.

The pitching has been horrendous. The offense non-existent. This team strikes out like it takes pride in this being the thing it's most prolific at.

They won the first game, thanks to Garrett Crochet. Roman Anthony started off with a bang, getting three hits in his first three at-bats, and has been a guaranteed out ever since. Last night he was 0-for-4 with 4 strikeouts.

Then Sonny Gray happened. I came into this season with a concern that the mid-level--I swear, there's so much mid-level in baseball right now--starting pitchers the team signed would be fat cats. Guys who were never that good, whom you're told to think are good in today's MLB when they go 9-8 on the year with a 4.17 ERA over 164 innings--look, dad, an ace!--who might be much closer to the end than the start.

Sonny Gray did his best to reduce the Sox' chances of victory in game number two, but the Sox fought back and lost in extra innings, which the Red Sox are terrible at because they take the wrong approach and they strike out a ton.

"You have to play for two in extra innings, especially on the road!"

This is wrong. One run will often get it done. Play for one. Take more if you get more. Bunt, chop a ball to second, but play for the one. Focus on the one.

Yale analytics people are ruining all sports and take out both the human element and the actual sport of the sport as they're over made into something soulless, dry, and machine-like without the efficiency.

In game three against the Cincinnati Reds, a midstream club in all probability, Connelly Early took the hill and was very good, which isn't surprising with him. He may not be a world beater--then again, let's wait and see--but he has poise, maturity, and projects an attitude of belonging right where he is.

No runners crossed the plate while he was in there, but he left with a man on, and in came Greg Weissert who walked a man and surrendered a bomb, turning a 2-0 lead into a 3-2 deficit.

The Red Sox were then clobbered in the first game of their series against the Houston Astros by a score of 8-1, with the grossly out of shape "Tales of the Texas" Ranger Suarez forking over 4 runs in 4.1 innings.

Brayan Bello, the modern day pitching version of bipolarity, was worse last night, allowing 5 earned runs in 4.2 innings as the Sox dropped their fourth in a row by the poleaxing score of 9-2.

Looks like a last place team.

"It's early!"

If you say so. But I see a team that looks like it's going to struggle to score, that still plays with its collective head up its ass--Jarren Duran, trying to make sure to do Jarren Duran things as early as possible, got himself picked off, for instance--and whose defensive line-up looks like a minefield of bad things waiting to happen.

The Red Sox put guys out there--like Masataka Yoshida in left so that he can get some at-bats--as if their plan is just to hope that the ball isn't hit their way because that's the only way they're apt to get away with it.

This isn't a good long term strategy, and though it might get later than most people think when it comes to the six-month baseball regular season, it's still a long-term deal and you have to find a way to be consistent in all phases of the game. Hoping things work out doesn't work over the course of baseball's long season. For a game, sure. Brace of games. But what you're doing needs to be sound. The ball will find you, as in baseball, as in life.

If Anthony has a couple more games like this, you'll have to drop him out of the lead-off spot, and then who do you use?

He took the collar last night, but Wilyer Abreau has gotten off to a nice start but I watch this player and I wonder if he has a thirty home run season in him should everything come together for a career year. I think that's his ceiling, the one year of the thirty bombs and nothing else much like it, but obviously one is wrong often with these prognostications. That's just who he feels like and looks like to me on April 1, 2026, having watched him to date.

Meanwhile, I hate to break this to you Red Sox fans, but Ceddanne Rafaela is not, and will never be, the player you think he is already and envision him as he gets better and better. He's also overrated defensively. You like his name more than anything and have projected that name onto the idea of this guy being Roberto Clemente, Jr. because it sounds flashy and mercurial. He's a highlight reel player. Someone people who don't know the sport like to share reels of on social media, but reels aren't what make you great in baseball, nor, for that matter, any sport. There are many games; so, yes, a flashy player will accumulate some flashy reel-friendly plays. I'd say don't be fooled, but most already have been.

The season is not yet a week old and the Red Sox find themselves three games out in what could be an especially difficult American League East. Sure, they may be fine, but what I've seen thus far raises concern. Already you find yourself wondering how this team could be as good as last year's squad, and last year's squad wasn't that great and were at considerable remove from being a serious championship contender.

Trevor Story is a year older and given that he didn't get hurt last year means he's very due; Aroldis Chapman is a year older; Jarren Duran is a knucklehead who will never grow up; and so on. They'll need Crochet to be a top three Cy Young type of pitcher, which I believe he can do again, but the margin for error is paper thin with this team.